A SOUTHWESTERN PLANT GROUP. 791 



congeners of the lily family. Both, moreover, are highly special- 

 ized representatives of their respective alliances, and of the two 

 the agaves represent the higher character of development. Thus 

 augmented interest is joined to all three when an outline of their 

 position in the vegetable kingdom shows us that they are to be 

 regarded as almost, if not quite, the highest products of the evo- 

 lution of that ancient Aztec-American flora whose descendants 

 they are. 



And so we are brought to realize that they were worthy re- 

 cipients of all the attention Engelmann and his co-workers be- 

 stowed; and the history of their investigations becomes almost 

 as interesting as the plants themselves. Foremost of all, as has 

 been said, stand the labors of Engelmann ; but with him are asso- 

 ciated the names of many untiring explorers and enthusiastic 

 botanists, each of whom contributed some vital element to the 

 general outcome: Wislizenus, Emory, Torrey, Parry, Schott, 

 Palmer, Newberry — all were workers in the field, and their names 

 have gone down in the annals of botany appended to one species 

 or another of the genera they studied, fittingly commemorating 

 the aid they gave toward awakening scientific interest in this 

 Southwestern plant group. Engelmann gathered together the 

 work of all and compiled it in his masterly monographs, taking 

 up first the cacti, then the yuccas, and finally the agaves. From 

 time to time he published additional notes, as new store of infor- 

 mation came to him, presenting most of the matter to the St. 

 Louis Academy of Sciences, of which he was for years the lead- 

 ing support. Up to the month he died he was working over the 

 great mass of notes he had accumulated on the cacti, preparatory 

 to publishing a grand revision of his first monograph. That the 

 work could not be completed is a source of deepest regret to 

 living botanists ; but, nevertheless, the original monograph still 

 stands, and will continue to stand, as the backbone of our knowl- 

 edge of the family it treats. And as to the other two mono- 

 graphs, the past decade has been able to add little to them of vital 

 importance save in so far as more extended observations have 

 served to more fully develop Engelmann's views. With justice, 

 therefore, is Engelmann accorded a prominent place among sci- 

 entists ; but inseparably linked with his is the name of another 

 man, honored as a broad-spirited patron of science, Henry Shaw, 

 the founder of the Missouri Botanical Garden, on the outskirts of 

 St. Louis. This was the pride of Engelmann's heart, and it was 

 here that he constantly labored under the liberal patronage and 

 never-failing encouragement of Shaw. The two men worked and 

 planned together in their common interest, and as a result we find 

 in the Missouri Garden to-day species of cacti numbering in the 

 hundreds, of agaves more than half a hundred, and the better 



